CHAPTER XIV.
Another fortnight passed and still no sign from the great wide world beyond the seas. The days came and went with monotonous regularity. According to the notches on Grace's shell calendar, which she had made carefully with each rising and setting of the sun, they were now well on toward the end of September. Three long months had gone by since that terrible night when the hurricane drove the ill-fated Atlanta on the reef.
Would a ship never come? This question Grace had asked herself almost hourly until gradually the belief came firmly rooted in her mind that they would never be rescued, that she was doomed to spend the rest of her life in this unknown, out of the way island, her grief-stricken parents believing that she had been drowned when the Atlanta went down. If any of the survivors reached land, as she supposed some of them did, the news would have been instantly cabled to America, and her name would be listed among the missing. No doubt her father had long given her up for dead. It would never occur for him to come in search of her. Nor was there much chance of a passing vessel ever seeing the smoke from the signal-fire. As Armitage had said, they were probably hundreds of miles out of the shipping track. In all probability no human being had ever set foot on that islet before.
Yet she never quite lost courage. Each day she made her weary pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Hope and eagerly scanned the horizon. Only disappointment awaited her. There was never anything in sight to bring joy to her heart.
They kept the big signal-fire going just the same. Night and day it burned, sending its flaming message of distress over the vast waste of heaving waters. It was never permitted to die down. Fresh fuel was piled on until the flames leaped high in the air or the thick black smoke went curling up in a long, straight column to the sky. Either the smoke or the blaze must be seen miles away at sea. Any moment some ship might turn out of her course and come to investigate.
Otherwise they seldom discussed the chances of rescue. By mutual consent it seemed to be a tabooed topic. Armitage never failed in his self-appointed task; he kept the fire going with a plentiful supply of driftwood, but that was all. He never voluntarily mentioned the signal-fire or the prospects of getting away, and intuitively she knew that it was a subject that was distasteful to him. If he took the pains to keep up the fire, he did it for her sake. She understood that, and she was mutely grateful to him for it. In return, she was considerate for his feelings. She avoided speaking of her desire for a ship to arrive. Occupied with their daily tasks, they never broached the subject. When he went up the hill to attend to the fire he was always alone, and she tactfully selected a time when he was occupied about the encampment to make her daily climb to Mount Hope.
What if help did not come? Could they—he and she—go on forever living together like this? She was an intelligent girl. She knew that the present relations between herself and Armitage were artificial, and based wholly upon the conventions of organized society. But they were unnatural relations, contrary to the laws of nature. In her heart she knew that she cared more for this strange, silent man than she dared to admit. Yes, he was the man of her day-dreams, the man she had waited for, the man she could love. She did not ask what he had been. She only knew him as he was. She loved him for what he was. He was poor, he was not what the world calls of gentle birth, yet he had qualities that in her eyes raised him above all men more favored by fortune. He was one of nature's noblemen. Some great secret sorrow had wrecked his life, but it had not taken from him his sweetness of character, his beauty of face and mind, his manly courage, his courtesy to a lonely, helpless woman. She loved the rich tones of his voice, the sad, wistful gaze in his fine eyes when they looked silently into hers. She knew of what he was thinking. She knew the dread that was on his heart—the dread of a misfortune a hundred times worse than any that had yet embittered his life. The dread that one day, sooner or later, the ship would come to carry away from him forever the woman who had once more made life seem worth living.
One morning Grace was sitting sewing, deftly plying the fish-bone needle which Armitage had made for her. She was making a desperate effort to patch up, for the hundredth time, her old battered ball-dress, which now, reduced to shreds, scarcely covered her decently. Armitage, no better off as regards attire, was stretched out on the sands near her, watching her work. It was a domestic scene. Any stranger chancing to pass that way would have taken them for a young married couple, the man evidently a fisherman, the woman, his wife, doing the household mending. A short distance away was their cabin, and on the fire close by the iron saucepan in which a savory mess was cooking for their noonday meal. Nothing was lacking to make the picture of connubial felicity complete.
Some such thought occurred to Armitage, for suddenly he blurted out:
"Do you believe in marriage?"